"Callahan 06 - The Callahan Touch 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

I drained my glass, and hit that bull's-eye dead center. As it had every time in rehearsal, the shape of the fireplace contained all the shards beautifully.
A staggered barrage of empty glasses rained into the hearth, like fireworks filmed in reverse, flashing colors as they tumbled, sparkling as they struck and burst. When the last of them had landed-Ralph's: he had to move in kind of close and flick it with his muzzle-I noted happily there still were no fragments on the floor of the bar proper.
Then I took a closer look, and blinked.
All the smithereened remains of those eighteen glasses were still in the fireplace, all right. And they had arranged themselves on the hearth floor in the shape of the word "MARY." In glittering italic script. It was nearly perfect, except that each letter had a small gap in it.
I turned to stone. "Hully Jeeze," Fast Eddie said. There were grunts and exclamations all around as others saw the phenomenon. That reassured me somewhat; if others saw it too, at least I wasn't crazy. Maybe that was good...
"Sorry," the stranger said.


I turned very slowly to face him. So did everyone else.
His expression was of mildest apology, as though he'd just committed some very small and unintentional faux pas.
"You did that?" I asked, pointing behind me at the fireplace.
"Not consciously, no." He got up-tugging at the seat of his jockey shorts and tossing his motorcycle scarf jauntily over his shoulder-and came over to me at the chalk line. He had one of those small man's jaunty strides, just a touch of rooster in
it. But it wasn't like he was overcompensating for his size; it was simply that he had a total self-confidence. You can tell the genuine article from even the best fake, every time. He turned his back to the fireplace, finished the last sip of his beer, and tossed the empty glass backwards over his shoulder. It hit the bull's-eye as squarely as my throw had.
And when its little musical smash had ended, all four letters in Mary's name were filled in.
After a moment of silence, Long-Drink McGonnigle spoke up. "Mister, I'd like to buy you a drink."
The stranger looked him up and down carefully. "Let me think about it."
The Doc was looking thoughtful. "Stuff like that happen around you a lot? If you don't mind my asking?"
The stranger stuck out his hairy jaw, sublimely comfortable at the center of attention in his jockey shorts. "To the best of my knowledge, only while I'm awake. The rest of the time I lead a normal existence."
The door swung open and Shorty came back in, looking thunderstruck. "What's the matter, Shorty?" Doc Webster asked. "Damage bad?"
Shorty blinked at us all. "I went to look. See how bad it was, you know?" He gestured with his hands, looking a little like a man playing an invisible banjo.
"That bad?" I asked sympathetically.
He shook his head. "When I left the house tonight, I had this ding in the rear bumper from a hit-and-run two days ago. I'd been meaning to report it to my insurance company. That motorsickel fixed it."
"Huh?"
"Fixed it nice as you please. The ding is gone. Popped back out. Near as I can figure, chrome from the bike fender plated itself everywhere there was chrome scraped off. You can't tell there ever was a ding. And my trunk light works now."
He shook his head. "Never did before. Not even when she was new."
Rooba rooba rooba.
The only one in the room who did not seem to need the services of a wig-tapper was the hairy stranger. He looked quite unsurprised and unimpressed by Shorty's news.
"Friend," I said to him, cutting through the buzz of conversation, "I am Jake Stonebender, and this is Mary's Place. These here are-" I introduced all my friends, one after another. "Welcome to our joint."
For the first time he smiled. Well, it had aspects of a smile to it, and for a second there teeth actually flashed in the undergrowth. "Usually I get more reaction. You people are all right." He looked at us all a little closer. "You've seen some shit, haven't you? All of you."
"That we have," Long-Drink said solemnly.
He nodded. "That's gonna save a lot of time. My name's Ernie Shea-but people generally call me the Duck."
An unusual name for a small man to choose. But there was just a touch of duck in his walk, and a trace of nasal honk to his voice, and he certainly could have given either Daffy or Donald points for attitude. Then I got it. "The Lucky Duck!"
"The proverbial," he agreed, and quacked twice, nasally, without quacking a smile. "But I sometimes think of myself as The Improbable Man. It's less misleading. 'Lucky' implies that the luck is always good."
"You mean-," Long-Drink began.
"How was the bike?" the Duck asked Shorty, interrupting.
"Well, that's the other funny thing," Shorty said. "I never in my life seen a piece of machinery so fucked up. I mean, every single piece of gear I could see on it was wrecked or ripped loose or mashed up some way or other. Even things you wouldn't think would-Mister, I'm sony. I don't think you can salvage as much as a bolt out of her."
The Duck nodded. "There you go. Don't worry about it. The best bargain you can get today, the Russians'!! charge you $187,000 to loft you into orbit. Your rates are more reasonable."
"I should have been more careful," Shorty said. "Look, I'm insured-"
"I'm not. And I hate cashing checks. Forget it."
"Huh?"
"It happens all the time. When I need transportation, something will come along. Don't worry about it. You, I'll let buy me a drink. After the Doctor there buys his round for the house. That'll square us, okay?"
"Sure thing," Shorty agreed dazedly.
"Wait a minute, Duck," Long-Drink said, doggedly pursuing his point. "Are you trying to tell me-"
The Duck's eyes flashed. "Okay, I'll show, not tell," he said. "That's how to handle the third-grade mentality. Watch, Sir Stephen Hawking: I'll try again." He glanced around, and saw the dart board. "You got darts for that thing?" he asked me.
I went back to the bar and got the compact little tube for him. Plastic darts, good ones, with snug little plastic tail-sockets so you can nest six of them in a tube that small, or carry them around out of the tube in comparative safety. He took them out and separated them, set down all but one of them on a nearby table, looked up and snatched Long-Drink's night watchman's cap from his head. Drink blinked, and then glared, and for an instant I thought, That duck' 11 have to be lucky to survive now, but the hairy man returned his glare with a look of such total confidence that Long-Drink decided to let it go.
"Thanks," the Duck said insolently. He held the cap up over his face, completely obscuring his vision, and let go with one of the darts.
It was a rotten shot. It just barely hit the target, wedging its way in precisely between the target proper and the surrounding rim.
I guess we'd all been expecting a bull's-eye. We giggled. Well, some of us guffawed. Relief of tension and all that.
Without looking at the results of his shot, he glared around at us from behind the hat until silence descended again. He took another dart, and let fly.
It socketed neatly into the first dart, with a suck-pop sound like kids make by plucking a finger out of their cheek.